What is Code Rovers?

Code Rovers is the game where you program robots to fight, solve problems, navigate mazes, race and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Design the best robot you can and test it online against people around the world.

You code your robots AI using a simple but powerful, visual block based programming language based on MITs Scratch.

Features

A fully realised, block-based programming language allowing full control over your robot.

A multitude of parts, accessories, sensors and weapons which are all fully code accessible.

Cross-platform online multiplayer allows you to test your robots against people around the world.

Code Rovers started out as a way to make coding classes more exciting and encourage self-improvement through competition. It has evolved from a teaching tool to a competitive challenge accessible to anyone, regardless of coding skills.

Get Code Rovers

The alpha version of Code Rovers is fully playable and is continuously being updated. It is also completely free at the moment, download it right now for Windows or Mac. A Linux version is planned but not available yet.

Code Rovers is still in early access and not all features are fully implemented yet.

Progress on the new robot building system.

So the old system of platform-like robots was simple and effective but boring and ugly, after watching a lot of BattleBots I realised I needed to come up with something better.

So now everything is nice, snap-on parts. Things still work mostly the same, parts will be linked to the programming code through the IDE and certain variables such as angle and mode will be exposed for change.

Notable new parts are the physical melee weapons. Saw blades and spikes mean that hunting down and ramming opponents will be a viable option, also making it necessary for shooting robots to be programmed with evasive tactics else be turned into scrap.

The great thing is that the three, originally planned robot types are now available, you can have a tank with independantly controlled tracks, a wheeled vehicle with wheels that can be powered or steered like a cars, and the frictionless hover repulsors which has your robot skating around everywhere. Since it's all modular and snap-on any combination can be possible as well.

The hovering option required the introduction of steerable jet engines to provide propulsion, although some weapons will exert kickback so a machinegun powered vehicle will also be an option.

It still needs some more polish before being integrated into the game but it will be in for the next update when it comes around.

Alpha 4 is now up with online play and some big bug smashes.

This was probably the most painstakingly tested update so far, with the new online system being implemented, introducing a world of possible bugs and issues with people connecting around the world I wanted to get it as good as I could. There's probably(definitely) still going to be some issues but I've tested it as much as I can using multiple instances of the game running on my PC here, plus a few on a networked Mac laptop it's had plenty of local testing. I managed to get a few patient friends around the world to test it to see if any bigger issues would come up over international distances and so far so good.

For any of those interested I used Photon Networking which has made the whole affair much less painful than it could have been. Code Rovers will take advantage of a huge network of servers set up as an international cloud meaning latency and server uptime will hopefully not be an issue.

Aside from the networking this was the bug smashing update, I've had a few of my programming classes playing it and those kids absolutely tore the game to shreds and managed to try out every possible combination of actions, I strongly recommend 8 year olds as alpha testers. As students they also seem physically unable to read a tutorial message.

Here is the complete list of changes for Alpha 4.

New Features:

Online network play

Name and health billboards on each robot

Bug Fixes:

Code objects no longer get stuck and hang around in the toolbox

Several issues which lead to everything becoming unclickable in the programming IDE have been fixed

Lasers no longer continue after a robot has died

Code is now cleared when a new robot is created

Code no longer glitches and complains and does generally crazy things when a linked part is removed

Hitbox for clicking on parts have been embiggened and now relate to the object, it used to only detect clicks on the connection spheres, not the actual part

Text colour and alignment no longer occasionally goes wonky in the tutorial

Linking parts to code no longer occasionally simply refuses to work

No longer freezes occasionally when user gets creative with input into code objects

Code Rovers is now greenlit!

Thanks to everyone who voted, this really is a big milestone for me as getting on Steam is one of the best ways to get an unknown indie game out there. Getting on Steam is a guaruntee that for better or worse, a lot of people are going to get to see your game.

It certainly went easier this time around, my last game Space Station Alpha took several months to get accepted, helped along in the end by a big wave of votes after the similar, and more well known, Spacebase DF-9 was cancelled. In comparison Code Rovers was only up for two weeks and wasn't publicised anywhere except on Greenlight itself and a few subreddits I frequent.

The trick now is to not make the same mistake I did with Space Station Alpha and release on Steam too early, an unpolished game will quickly attract those very permanent no votes. It's tempting to put the game up as soon as possible and start getting sales but Code Rovers is going to stay free for as long as possible so I can take advantage of all your wonderful free testing. Find a bug or thought of a cool feature, be sure and let me know.